


scout! anamnesis

by orphan_account



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, [john mulaney voice] the oddballs are wonderful and i love them so much, callbacks to eccentric, gentle post-grad gen fic, light snarking full of love, lo-fi beats to cry to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 10:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21073754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: anamnesis • \an·am·ne·sis\noun : a recalling to mind ; REMINISCENCEafter natsume's graduation, the five oddballs meet in a familiar location once more. this time, instead of wishing to forget, they wish to remember.





	scout! anamnesis

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends! i'm back again with an old, yet new, fic. (see end notes for an explanation re: my extended absence.)
> 
> this was written as my piece for [eccentric](https://twitter.com/oddballzine), a zine dedicated to the five oddballs. now that the zine is making its way to people, i can finally post it! it's intended to be a loose post-grad spiritual successor to the "scout! eccentric" gacha story. however, i would like to note that as this was written for the zine, it was written nearly a year ago, so it came prior to a lot of information and post-grad content we have now. please be gentle with any resulting inconsistencies.
> 
> if you bought the zine, thank you! you might note some minor edits and formatting that were intended to be in the zine piece proper, but otherwise, it's more or less the same. enjoy!

Dusk is falling on the streets, bathing buildings in hues of lavender and honey, and Natsume is no longer a student of Yumenosaki Academy. The lights of his graduation ceremony still dance ephemeral behind his eyelids when he closes them, something like stars and spells intermingling. He remembers seeing Sora’s tears in the crowd, the same tears he’d cried in secret for the departure of the four who came before him. Remembers taking Sora’s hands gently in his own and squeezing them. Remembers telling him: _ This is not an End, but a new Beginning. We will wait for You. _

Remembers Sora’s delicate voice forming not _ shishou_, but _ Natsume-niisan_.

He tucks his head down, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Natsume."

The beckoning voice stops Natsume in his tracks, and he looks up to see Shu leaning against the window of a familiar cafe just shortly ahead of him. Shu, who looks like his freedom overseas has done wonders for him, relaxed in a way Natsume rarely ever recalls seeing him, calm in a way that feels like justice. Unthinking, Natsume is upon him in only a few strides, wrapping his arms around Shu and burying his face in the shoulder of Shu’s button-up. Shu doesn’t tense at the motion like he used to; rather, reciprocates the affection and hugs Natsume close.

“I’ve missed You,” Natsume, in this relatively private moment, can finally confess with a sigh. “Thank you for Coming.”

Shu chuckles quietly, patting his back. There’s the slightest French influence affecting his voice now, growing stronger each time Natsume speaks to him, unfamiliar yet _ him _all at the same time. “Of course. You didn’t truly think I would let something as mundane and temporal as distance stop me from watching our youngest and brightest graduate, did you?”

_ Brightest_, Shu says, as if he hasn’t become a world-famous artist in his own right since he left. Natsume makes to say so, but another, distinctly more recognizable call interrupts them.

“Shu~ We _ all _ came here to see him, are you really being selfish at a time like this?” Natsume leans up and glances over Shu’s shoulder to see Wataru hanging out of the door of the cafe, making an absolute _ scene _ with his lack of volume control. Not to mention _ all of him_, which is perpetually and inherently making a scene in itself. Wataru’s eyes brighten up when they meet Natsume's, and he gasps theatrically, raising a hand to his mouth in delight. “Oh! I _ thought _you looked different. Why, Natsume-kun, I’m absolutely flattered.”

Natsume pulls free from Shu’s grasp and backs away, averting his eyes as he pulls on the loose braid in the long piece of his hair. It's become something of a habit now, to such an extent that he didn't even consider Wataru recognizing it for what it is: an honor, an homage, a message of remembrance. “Yeah. Just a bit Different,” he murmurs sheepishly, and he thinks Shu might be laughing at him, but he turns his head and shields it politely.

“Amazing. Well, don't just stand there! Come in, come in, we’ve all been waiting for the star of the show to arrive!”

_ Star, _Natsume notes faintly as he follows Shu and Wataru inside, allowing the word to settle gentle in his chest. The cafe is empty but for the corner booth co-opted by his seniors, Kanata giggling in that pleasant bubbly way as Rei, next to him, gestures about something indistinguishable. They both turn as Natsume enters, eyes lighting with warmth, and Natsume fidgets with his hair again. It's not as if he doesn't see them all relatively often between their respective work in the pro circuits or overseas, but to have all four of them in the same room again, focused only on him, he finds is quite a lot. Did they rent out the entire cafe for this purpose? He really wouldn’t put it past them.

“Stop Staring, you all know what I look like by Now,” he chides with a smile, the other two trailing him as he slides into the opposite side of the booth. There’s something in the center of the table he situates himself before. His eyes catch at the sight of an elegant bottle on ice and a small wrapped box, but his wonder is interrupted by the the other two sliding in after him, Wataru now on his left and Rei on his right. Of course, he deserves this; he'd elected to sit only by Shu the last time they were here. Being cornered by all four of them this time is calculated payback, no doubt.

“You’re not the ‘same’ Nacchan as ‘before’, though,” Kanata points out with one of those whimsical smiles. 

“Right, right. You're _ almost _ my height now, for starters. Finally,” Rei teases.

Natsume bats at Rei’s hand as it moves to ruffle his hair, wrinkling his nose. “Knock it Off, Rei-niisan. I didn't suffer through years of that hellish machination they call an educational system to grow Taller, you Know.”

“Aha! Our youngest is quick-witted as always.” Wataru’s voice, while admittedly more mellow now that he’s older, is twice as booming in the relatively empty space. He tips Natsume a conspiratorial wink as he plucks the bottle from the bucket of ice. Non-alcoholic, as Natsume suspected, but he can’t quite read the label from this distance. Some sort of white grape juice, he thinks. “Not that any of us have any right to speak on school attendance, of course.”

“Indeed, and I may still be your Youngest, but I’m a graduate Now, Wataru-niisan,” he says mildly, raising an eyebrow. “Have I not grown enough to command some sort of Respect?”

“Mm, do you really think you haven’t had our respect all this time?” Rei questions, voice light and a bit teasing. Natsume considers the question, and his mouth snaps shut.

Once Wataru opens the bottle, Shu clears his throat as he beckons for it with a gesture of a hand, pouring it evenly into five fine glasses that look more as if they’re intended to hold wine. The two of them pass them out across the table, and Natsume eyes his for a moment before taking a sip. Yes, grape juice. It’s sweet and lingers on the tongue. He takes a moment to wonder about how expensive it may have been.

Before he can ask, the wrapped box is being pushed towards him with delicate fingers. Fingers that are prompting him with their tiny nudging motions.

“Kanata-kun, didn’t we agree that we should wait?” Rei asks, levelling him a look that’s too playful to be truly scolding. Kanata brightens with laughter in response, his answer simple and too matter-of-fact to argue.

“Yes, but I ‘want’ him to ‘open’ it now.”

“You all really didn’t have to get me Anything,” Natsume objects, swirling the contents of his glass to have something to do with his hands. With his eyes. Looking anywhere but at them.

It would be far too cliché to admit that their friendship has always been enough, after all.

“Nonsense,” Shu scoffs, that French lilt especially present. “Of course we did.”

“Besides,” Wataru adds, dropping his tone low and nudging at Natsume’s arm with his elbow. “If it should ease your conscience, it was merely something borrowed and now returned.”

Now, _ that _ undeniably piques Natsume’s interest. He sets his drink aside.

The package is light in his hands, all shining red paper tied with a dainty gold ribbon he suspects Shu had something to do with. He slips it free and unwraps the gift carefully, aware of the attention focused on him as he furrows his brow, confusion quickly chased by surprise pulling his lips into a soft inhale. This explains, then, why he wasn’t able to find this for the past week -- he’ll have to apologize to everyone he harassed over it, Tsumugi especially. It’s his own tarot box, one he crafted himself and left ordinary for its purpose, the deck of cards now shifting inside as he touches each addition made to it. Painted in the colors he’s assigned to the other eccentrics, spun sugar stars decorate the front of the wooden canvas, a name signed beneath each one.

“We thought it was too ‘plain’ for something ‘magical’,” Kanata explains, leaning across the table and nearly knocking over Rei’s drink to briefly trail his fingers over his own star. Natsume looks up to catch his smile as he falls back into his seat, and one spills across his face in return, his heart clenching in the most pleasant of ways. “So now you have ‘all’ of us with you.”

“Thank You. I love It,” Natsume murmurs, worrying his lower lip as he rests the box on the table, a hand laid protectively over it. He knows what the stars are referencing beyond a shadow of a doubt, and at the reminder he feels a bit self-conscious, shameful heat coloring his cheeks. He clicks his tongue. “Ah, the last time we were Here… That ‘Forgetting Magic’ game we Played... To think I did something so Childish, it’s embarrassing Now.”

“It wasn’t childish,” Rei supplies warmly, laying a hand on his arm. “You’re never honest, Natsume-kun, so it was your own way of trying to relieve our pain; to brighten this maudlin world for us, even if only for a moment. It worked, didn’t it?”

Did it? Natsume frowns in thought, looking away. Well, that much he doesn’t have a smart retort for.

“Mm. Perhaps this time we could play a different game?” Wataru suggests, hair pooling on the table as he tilts his head and traces the rim of his glass with a finger. “How about… ‘Remembering Magic’?”

Natsume snorts delicately, pulling the box down to tuck it safely into his lap and taking another sip of his drink. “What is That?”

“Fufu! How intriguing that you don’t know,” Wataru says, eyes gleaming, as if he hasn’t just made it up on the spot. For a moment, Natsume almost believes him, but then, that’s just the magic Wataru has always exuded. It's reassuring that even time hasn't faded it. “I think that we should each name a memory with the others that we never want to forget, thus weaving them into the fabric of time for eternity. They shall be bound to this place, and to us.”

“Oh,” Kanata gasps affectedly. “That sounds like ‘fun’.”

“I’m in,” Rei says without hesitation.

Shu sighs, the drama of the sound evident and all too familiar. “I suppose that means I am as well.”

Natsume pauses, still running his fingers thoughtfully over the wood of the box. His own way of trying to relieve their pain -- and Wataru’s own way of trying to replace it with joy. “Me Too.”

“Amazing!” Natsume is so thankful he at least eased up on the habit of veritably exploding rose petals when he says it. That would be a mess, right now. “Then, Kanata, since you initiated our previous game, why don’t you go first?”

Kanata hums, tapping a finger to his chin as his eyes seem to drift somewhere further than the room. Then, he perks up.

“When everyone took me to the ‘aquarium’ the day of ‘graduation’.” he giggles, his expression taking on that dreamy cast and his voice so soft and slow. “You took me because I was ‘scared’. Everyone had their own ‘paths’, so I thought I would lose my beloved ‘friends’, but then…” He lays his hands on the table, gaze shifting amongst them while he tries to recall something particular. “Shu pointed at a ‘school’ of pretty ‘fish’, and he said… Mm… How did he ‘word’ it?”

“Ah, I remember,” Rei drawls, leaning in with intent. “He said, ‘You see these fish? Even if they roam, they will always reunite. They will be together until their final moments. The same is true for us.’”

As Kanata’s eyes light up, Shu averts his own to the table, shaking his head with a sound that resembles a huff of exaggerated annoyance. “It seems even I am capable of saying such embarrassing things on occasion.”

Reaching out to grab Shu’s arm across the table, Kanata pouts. “It wasn't ‘embarrassing’, it was ‘true’. We're like the ‘fish’.” He pauses, relaxing into a smile that looks, after a year, more confident than it ever was before. “I ‘thought’ about that a lot, and it made me feel ‘nice’ when I was ‘lonely’. Shu really is a ‘kind’ person.”

Shu clears his throat delicately, a tenderness at the edges of his gaze that he can't quite hide from them. “Thank you, Kanata.”

“I’ve got one,” Rei chimes in, throwing his arm over the back of the booth, the grin he turns on Natsume catlike and mischievous in a way that makes him look younger all at once. His air of maturity hasn't waned, but joy lights him up in all of the right places now. “When Natsume-kun tried to help me build that coffin for Ritsu.”

Natsume visibly bristles at the mention, frowning over his glass. “Eugh, must you choose something so Unflattering?”

Rei laughs loudly, patting him on the shoulder. “It was quite a sight, wasn’t it? I’d never seen our youngest -- mm, excuse me, our Sakasaki-kun, so frustrated.” The catch, the correction, and Natsume is tapping his nails, trying not to give away how pleased he is. “Yet, the fact that you would help an old man such as myself even if you didn’t truly want to, even if it caused you trouble and kept you up all hours -- I’ll never forget that. It held a lot of meaning, you know.”

The sentimentality that slips into Rei’s tone makes Natsume dip his head and flick his gaze down, hiding a cough behind his sleeve. “I suppose I can see That.”

“Well, this is going splendidly! Me next, me next,” Wataru hurries, pressing his hands on the table with a grin. “When Rei and Kanata helped me braid my hair for our performance of Romeo and Juliet.”

“Oh, what a ‘terror’,” Kanata laughs, pressing his fingers to his lips. “Your hair is rather ‘unwieldy’ to deal with, Wataru.”

“You can say that again,” Rei comments with a shade of exasperation, but he’s still smiling when he shakes his head. “It took us hours, especially when he got bored and started playing the trick where it would just grow longer and longer…”

“Yet you laughed at it, and you still didn’t fight with me! Because we never fight,” Wataru sighs, amusement and affection sparking in his eyes in equal measure. “That’s what makes it such a cherished memory to me.”

“We never fight?” Shu comments finally, raising his eyes from the table where he’s merely been listening. Though objecting, his tone has more mirth than it has bite. “I think you would do well to exclude at least one of us from that statement.”

“Ah, but we know that’s always out of love!” Shu narrows his eyes at the comment, frowning, but Wataru doesn’t leave him the room to turn that, too, into an argument. Shu has become much more honest, but old habits die hard; Natsume is just as guilty. “Anyway, perfect timing! Shu, you next,” Wataru directs, crossing his arms and giving a short and decisive nod of his head.

Shu huffs, returning his attention to the table, and he takes much longer to respond. In the silence, the turning of gears as he thinks is almost audible, the fretting over how to phrase something required to bare so much vulnerability.

“The live we performed together,” he says delicately. “As shameful as it may be to admit it -- the five of on the stage of our triumph, wearing the outfits I devoted so much time and effort to crafting, will always be special to me. I do not think I believed in miracles, nor in something as trite as dreams coming true, until the very moment our voices harmonized there.”

The adoration that blossoms amongst them in response is very nearly a tangible thing, crawling along Natsume’s skin and causing his fingers to flex as he recalls the memory himself. The feeling, finally, of rebellion and freedom; it only makes sense that it would resonate particularly with Shu, who gave the impression of a songbird in a cage long after the war. A melancholic melody sung by one who was broken, transformed into a celebration with the voices of many who were healing.

“That’s so ‘sweet’, Shu,” Kanata singsongs, and Shu clears his throat, staring harder at the table.

“I think that is one thing all of us will always Remember,” Natsume contributes quietly, and, as if summoned, Wataru’s eyes turn to focus on him. If there’s a teary hint to them, it’s hidden well, though not quite well enough.

“It seems you’re the only one left, hm?”

Natsume blinks and lowers his gaze, gripping his glass and examining the golden tint to the liquid inside. Slowly, all eyes drifts towards him, and his heart is a quietly thrumming thing. Beneath the table, he touches the raised edges of the box, debating. There are so many memories -- how can he pick just one? There’s the time they all surprised Kanata with water guns on his birthday, his shock and laughter still vibrant and sparkling even in memory. The time Shu took him under his wing to teach him Valkyrie choreography under insurance of top secrecy, the first time he’d deigned to share his art out of a sense of enjoyment. The time Wataru taught him a spell for peace and protection, his voice unduly quiet as he spelled out each word so that Natsume could always remember it properly and rely upon it. The time Rei spoke to him freely on the importance of his unit before Star Spirit Festival, gently guiding him in the right direction.

This moment, here and now.

So many memories.

So many precious things.

“I don’t want to forget anything involving any of You,” he murmurs at last, voice mulled into something tender and warmed. He raises his eyes to meet theirs. “Nothing. Every memory I have is a beautiful One, you See. Letting any of them slip away would be simply Unacceptable.”

There’s a silence. A soft love that radiates. Unspoken understanding, and perhaps agreement, _ we don't want to forget anything about you either _ or _ we fought so hard for these pieces that are only ours_. Natsume's fingers clench.

Then, a broad grin spreads across Wataru’s face. “That’s exactly the answer we’d expect. So, a toast!”

Natsume startles in confusion, the change of subject abrupt, and this isn’t quite proceeding as planned. “Wait, No, I was going to--”

“We ‘know’,” Kanata says, laughing as he picks up his glass. They all stand around him, one by one, as if they’ve practiced this, and curse them, they likely did. “That’s why we wanted to ‘beat’ you to it. We can’t let you perform the ‘toast’ at your own ‘party’.”

“How did you…” Natsume sputters, eyes flicking between them, and Wataru waves away the end of the question with a knowing smile.

“Because you’re always putting us before yourself, Natsume-kun. It’s really quite transparent.”

“You have done so much for us,” Shu says, looking directly at Natsume now, the clarity of the statement impactful in itself. “Despite what our past has held and in spite of treatment you were occasionally not inclined to, you have always been here to attempt to mend us. You have always been the foundation which binds us together, and our brightest star. Allow us to repay that debt of gratitude."

“I…” Natsume sinks back against the booth with the impact of the words, somehow feeling all at once like their youngest again. Yet, this time, none the less respected for it; in fact, the opposite, the weight of their thanks settling upon his shoulders like a cloak. He reaches up to twist his fingers in his braid, unable to look at any of them yet unable to look away. “Alright. If you Insist.”

"So,” Rei says, lifting his glass, “to the one we protected and cared for, and who allowed it even when he hated us for it.” He tips Natsume a knowing wink.

Wataru grins, gesturing in a theatrical nature that suits his voice, picking up where Rei left off. "To the one who never stopped chasing after a dream we left behind, until he finally closed his fingers around it..."

"To the one who penned us a new legacy not as monsters nor gods, but as simple humans," Shu continues, the proud language of his body speaking more than his words.

Kanata gentles, his voice kind and fond. "To the 'one' who 'protected' and 'cared' for our 'memories' in exchange, and refused to let us ‘fade away’..."

“Thank you, Natsume.”

The chorus of their voices is a harmony, not unlike that of their own song, reverberating through Natsume’s ribcage with the same exhilarant tune. Unbidden, there’s a burning at the backs of his eyes as he raises his glass to clink them against the others; these four who were swept unpredictably into his life and became a part of it he couldn’t possibly imagine going without. These four who protected him, and these four who, he now knows, he finally managed to protect in kind. The endearment that floods through him is something like sunlight or sugar stars or even the tears that spill down his cheeks, finally in view for all of them to see.

He finds, as he takes the obligatory sip of his drink, that he doesn’t mind quite as much as he thought he would.

They’re all free, now, to do things like this; to laugh and to cry and to not have judgment laid upon them for either. Yumenosaki was merely a haunting, brief but temporary. It did not define them. They are happy, and Natsume couldn’t have asked for anything more, at the end of it all.

“To all of our precious memories,” he says softly, dropping the intonation at the ends of his words to breathe them sincere, honor them like a prayer, “and to the coming years of making many more.”

As dusk winds into night, their exuberance is loud enough to slip through thin windows and spill out onto the streets. Perhaps it does. Perhaps someone, somewhere, can hear just the faintest strains of five monsters reborn into the light, five gods making their entry to the mortal world, five friends bound together with a single red thread. 

Perhaps their celebration reaches the ends of the earth, or beyond, to the stars.

If it does, Natsume thinks, that would be only fitting.

They have so much further to go from here.

Yet where they go now, they need never go alone.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you've all been doing well. as much as my writing schedule will allow, i'll try not to be such a stranger. as always, thank you so much for reading and for being here for me. ♡


End file.
